Emageon grew out of research performed at the University of Alabama in Birmingham (UAB) Medical Center in 1997 when Barton Guthrie, M.D., of the Division of Neurosurgery at UAB coordinated development of a medical image management system that enabled surgeons to use electronic imaging to assist with surgery.
Initial development efforts centered on creating a DICOM viewer and an infrastructure to support it. However, as the development team worked on specifications for the DICOM management system, they quickly realized that no adequate DICOM archive manager was available and would have to be created. A portable, standards-based archive manager would be a vital component of any DICOM system, regardless of vendor.
The core technology was commercialized in 2000 to provide the healthcare industry with key components designed to manage large volumes of medical images in a cost-effective and efficient manner. With its roots in standards-based image management and archiving, Emageon expanded its vision to encompass PACS plus the enterprise management, access and visualization of medical content across departments and specialties.
Also in early 2000, at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, entrepreneurs and software developers created a 3D-aware, Web-enabled, standards-based image distribution system. Incorporating as UltraVisual Medical Systems, the company developed cutting-edge, advanced visualization software for diagnostic and clinical use. In 2003 Emageon merged with UltraVisual Medical Systems. As Emageon, the combined company was then ableto offer a complete system with native, advanced visualization capabilities that managed images from creation to archiving to display, available in both 2D and 3D formats anywhere and anytime across the healthcare enterprise.
In early 2005 Emageon Inc. became a publicly traded company (NASDAQ: EMAG). In November of 2005 Emageon acquired Camtronics Medical Systems and its family of cardiology products, adding cardiac image and information management to the existing archive management and advanced visualization solution. This further emphasized Emageon’s enterprise vision to provide comprehensive, standards-based content management, workflow and advanced visualization to healthcare facilities.
These combined solutions provided physicians and healthcare professionals with relevant multi-specialty tools through a dynamic user interface. Integrated Delivery Networks (IDNs), hospitals and imaging facilities were able to deploy a functionally rich, standards-based technology that lowered total cost of ownership.
Emageon delivers value to its customers through its enterprise solution for digital medical content—images, waveforms, video, audio, document management and reports. It couples its advanced technology with a comprehensive set of customer success programs designed to achieve business results, including quicker care response, enhanced patient care, improved productivity and reduced costs.
Emageon’s multi-specialty solutions, RadSuite™, HeartSuite™, MammoSuite™, OrthoSuite™ and others consist of advanced visualization and image management software, comprehensive support services and third-party components. Its open systems, standards-based solution is designed to help customers improve staff productivity, automate complex, mission-critical medical imaging workflow, enhance revenue opportunities, maximize return on investment in capital equipment and clinical information systems, and provide better service to physicians and patients.
Emageon’s fast, native, advanced visualization software includes high-performance 2D and 3D imaging with high-end features such as multi-planar reconstruction (MPR), fully integrated 3D volume and surface reconstruction, customizable hanging protocols, image fusion, automated linking, integrated dictation and multiple display support. It optimizes productivity for multiple specialties including cardiology, neurology, orthopedics, radiology and surgery and others facing significant challenges with larger datasets and increasing volumes. For image-intensive areas such as ED and ICU, Emageon’s solution provides specialty-appropriate tools to enhance the patient care episode.
Emageon’s Clinical Content Management and Clinical Workflow applications are engineered to provide high-availability, real-time, integrated access to clinical content assets across the enterprise, including digital medical images, waveforms, video, audio, key images, documents, reports and other physician work products. Clinical content management and clinical workflow are based on DICOM, HL7 and JPEG2000 standards and follow the IHE (Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise) technical framework to maximize interoperability and ensure consistent, reliable and collaborative updates of demographic and procedure information, movement among work queues and appropriate access control.
Emageon’s unique Customer Success Program includes components that provide a holistic approach for achieving desired adoption rates. Targeted to clinical and healthcare professionals, Emageon’s training and customer marketing services measure performance, track business metrics and provide improvement throughout Emageon’s solution life cycle. Emageon provides all the technology and services to ensure the system meets its objectives, is adopted enterprise wide and makes everyone in the flow of digital medical information as efficient as possible.